All That Meat in Pet Food Has a Big Environmental Impact

There’s no doubt that our furry friends are good for us. Studies have shown that living with a dog or cat can reduce stress, boost our immune systems, and increase our overall happiness. But what’s good for humans is not always good for the planet. A study published in the journal PLOS One finds that meat consumption by pet dogs and cats creates 64 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Meat production requires more energy and resources than plant-based foods. It also produces more waste.

Gregory Okin of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability is a geographer by trade. He studies the way weather events and climate patterns can affect ecosystems, and vice versa. One day he found himself puzzling over the ecological ramifications of the current craze for backyard chickens.

"I was thinking about how cool it is that chickens are vegetarian and make protein for us to eat, whereas many other pets eat a lot of protein from meat," he said in a study. "And that got me thinking—how much meat do our pets eat?"

Okin started by considering the number of dogs and cats in the country—approximately 163 million. He then analyzed the amount of meat in the most popular pet food brands, and compared this to the amount of meat American humans consume each year.

The results suggest that our pets represent a huge portion of the meat we produce, eat, and excrete every year. Okin’s calculations show that American dogs and cats consume 19 percent as many calories as the country’s 321 million humans—an intake comparable to the population of France.

But pound for pound, pet food also contains more meat than human food. When Okin adjusted for this fact, he found that dogs and cats gobble up 25 percent of our annual meat-based calorie intake. That results in the production of 64 million tons of carbon dioxide a year—about the same output as 13.6 million humans driving their cars for a year.

If our dogs and cats constituted their own country, they'd rank fifth in global meat consumption, behind only Russia, Brazil, China, and the United States.

"I'm not a vegetarian, but eating meat does come at a cost," Okin said in a statement. "Those of us in favor of eating or serving meat need to be able to have an informed conversation about our choices, and that includes the choices we make for our pets."

Great White Sharks May Have Led to Megalodons' Extinction

The megalodon has been extinct for millions of years, but the huge prehistoric shark still fascinates people today. Reaching 50 feet long, it's thought to be the largest shark to ever stalk the ocean, but according to a new study, the predator may have been brought down by familiar creature: the great white shark.

As Smithsonian reports, the analysis, published in the journal PeerJ, finds that the megalodon may have vanished from seas much earlier that previously believed. Past research showed that the last megalodons died roughly 2.6 million years ago, a time when other marine life was dying off in large numbers, possibly due to a supernova blasting Earth with radiation at the end of the Pliocene epoch.

A team of paleontologists and geologists revisited the fossils that this conclusion was originally based on for their new study. They found that many of the megalodon remains had been mislabeled, marked with imprecise dates, or dated using old techniques. After reassessing the specimens, they concluded that the species had likely gone extinct at least 1 million years earlier than past research indicates.

If the megalodon vanished 3.6 million years ago rather than 2.6 million years ago, it wasn't the victim of supernova radiation. One known factor that could explain the loss of the 13 million-year-old apex predator at this time is the rise of a new competitor: the great white shark. This predator came on the scene around the same time as the megalodon's decline, and though a full-grown great white shark is less than half the size of a mature megalodon, the species still would have been a stressor. Adult great whites likely competed with juvenile megalodons, and with the megalodon's favorite prey—small whales—becoming scarce at this time, this may have been enough to wipe the megalodons from existence.

Even if great white sharks eventually beat megalodons for dominance in the oceans, the megalodon's status as one of the most fearsome predators of all time shouldn't be contested. The giant sharks had 7-inch teeth and a bite stronger than that of a T. rex.

Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld’s Beloved Cat, Will Inherit Part of the Late Designer’s Fortune

As the longtime creative director of Chanel and Fendi, Karl Lagerfeld made his fortune in high fashion. After the news broke yesterday that Lagerfeld had died in Paris at the age of roughly 85 (his exact birth year is disputed), some wondered who would inherit his estate. The fashion designer’s net worth is estimated to be between $200 and $240 million, according to different sources, but he never married or had children.

Lagerfeld didn’t live alone, though. The iconic designer shared his home with Choupette, a 7-year-old Birman cat whose name seems to be a play on ma choupette, a cutesy French term of endearment that translates to, literally, "my cabbage," but is used more like "my pumpkin." According to Marie Claire, the fluffy white feline will inherit a chunk of Lagerfeld’s fortune. This is on top of the amenities the cat has already been afforded: She reportedly has two maids, a personal chef, a bodyguard, and an iPad. She also gets weekly manicures and has her own Wikipedia page, Twitter account, and Instagram, with more than 200,000 followers on the photo platform.

All this pampering hasn’t made her lazy, though. Choupette has somehow found time to model, create a makeup collection and fashion line, and “write” a book titled The Private Life of a High-Flying Fashion Cat. However, Lagerfeld forbade her from doing cat food commercials, because she is “too sophisticated” for that, obviously.

The designer had adopted her from a friend, model Baptiste Giabiconi, in 2011. In a 2018 interview with Numéro, Lagerfeld said he had named Choupette, among others, as an heir to his fortune (the others are presumably human).

However, even if Choupette does inherit a sizable portion of his wealth, she still won’t be the world’s wealthiest cat. Grumpy Cat (a.k.a. Tardar Sauce) is also a millionaire, even if she doesn't seem too pleased about it.